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John Tory must engage all political stripes in transit building: James

While the TTC gets some funding from the province and a tiny amount from Ottawa, ridership demands outstrip the city’s ability to fund.

Toronto Mayor elect John Tory and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne appeared for the first time together publicly after Tory's election, at Spoke Club, each speaking for UN's HeForShe campaign launch. (Bernard Weil/Toronto Star)

Exhibiting political smarts rarely on display with insular unions, the head of the region’s largest transit union has challenged the federal government to fund transit and he will endorse the Conservatives to indicate the city’s gratitude.

In other words, the region’s transit needs are so pressing that the union is prepared to abandon its traditional political ties, endorse the party with the best funding plan for Toronto, and urge citizens to follow suit when the federal election is called next year.

“Yes, we would. We would go that far,” said Bob Kinnear when reporters asked him if the Amalgamated Transit Union local 113 would drop the New Democrats and back any party with the best transit-funding plan.

“We expect Torontonians to support the party that supports Toronto,” he said, calling on all residents to unite behind the transit banner and insist that the anticipated 2015 federal election is fought on the need for transit funding.

Kinnear says the TTC alone needs $34 million a year in new subsidies from city hall to add service for an anticipated 61 million new riders by 2018. Meanwhile, the system can’t keep up with existing rider demands. And plans for new vehicles, maintenance and construction are $3 billion short for the next decade.

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“We face an unprecedented crisis; it’s worse than people realize,” he said.

Transit fares are constantly on the rise. City ratepayers subsidize the system by $428 million a year but that is among the lowest government subsidies in North America. And while the TTC gets some funding from the province and a tiny amount from Ottawa, ridership demands outstrip the city’s ability to fund.

Kinnear says he expects mayor-elect John Tory to drive a vigorous lobby primarily aimed at the federal government where budget surpluses exist and where transit funding has been limited.

Hours after his city hall news conference to release a union report calling for the transit funding lobby, Tory and TTC head Andy Byford both welcomed the union’s initiative as “constructive . . . important and useful.”

Tory admits that, as mayor, he’d be expected to take the lead. And will. His problem is the many initiatives recommended by the union require money he is yet to identify in the daily briefings he’s been given since the Oct. 27 election.

The interregnum between the outgoing Ford administration and the Tory era has given the various transit entities reason to compare notes and attempt to align strategies ahead of imminent city council debates over conflicting visions.

Last week, Tory met with the city’s top bureaucrats and the TTC and Metrolinx (the provincial agency that would build SmartTrack) to understand the starting points from each side and how they align with Tory’s campaign promise to build SmartTrack in seven years. On Tuesday he is to meet with Byford to hear the TTC’s unique issues.

Already, and not surprisingly, all sides are beginning to align with Tory. Byford said Tuesday that he has always said Tory’s idea of using existing GO transit lines for SmartTrack “makes sense. We can do the two things in parallel,” he said, when asked if SmartTrack can co-exist with the downtown relief line and the many immediate improvements the TTC has proposed.

Kinnear is calling on city council to quickly fund detailed studies of SmartTrack to determine its feasibility.

And Tory said Monday that everything he has heard so far from transit bureaucrats suggests that SmartTrack will provide relief to the Yonge line.

All that is entirely predictable.

What’s also longstanding is the chronic underfunding of the transit system. Periodically, individual groups call for a fix. Sometimes it’s the board of trade, other times Civic Action, or a think tank, or a commissioned study.

With a new administration at city hall, a new government at Queen’s Park that is pro-transit, and a federal election on the horizon the Toronto region has a unique opportunity.

Tory must lead his new council, forge an alliance with the 905 mayors who all have similar needs, present an experts-backed transit blueprint that the public can embrace, and take it to the other orders of government for funding.

“I believe if we pull together we can get the TTC back to being the jewel in the crown of transit systems,” Byford told reporters.

The task is not new. Some of the supplicants are the same. The need is greater than ever. The strategy must be unassailable.

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